Exchange
by young-love
Summary: Even at a young age, a certain Uchiha boy knew the meaning of “give and take”.


Disclaimer: I Don't Own Naruto

Summery: Even at a young age, a certain Uchiha boy knew the meaning of "give and take".

Key: "talking"

'_thinking'_

'_**inner thoughts'**_

* * *

Iruka clapped his hands loudly gaining the attention of his adorable--yet rambunctious--students. Sixteen pairs of eyes stared at the older man as if they were prosecuting him of committing a crime.

Iruka just stared back at the youngsters with a pleasant smile, "Alright class, outside play time is over. It's time for everyone to come inside."

As if on cue random complaints and groans could be heard all throughout the small playground. Iruka who has been through this routine time and time again ignored them and began to usher in the students inside the building. The young students shuffled and dragged their feet inside.

"9, 10, 13...16" Iruka counted the munchkins heads as they passed on by. Satisfied by the checks he closed the outside doors when the final student filed inside.

Being taught earlier in the year, all of the students naturally sat down in their designated tables. There were a total of four large round tables; each table seated three students.

Table 1: Choji Akimichi, Shikamaru Nara, and Ino Yamanaka

Table 2: Sasuke Uchiha, Naruto Uzumaki, and Sakura Haruno

Table 3: Hinata Hyuga, Kiba Inuzuka, and Shino Aburame

Table 4: Lee Rock, Tenten Kunai, and Neji Hyuga

The students all chatted amongst themselves as Iruka went up to his desk to pick up a stack of thin coloring books. He gave the students each a booklet while telling them to get their coloring utensils out. The children shuffled through their belongings collecting the needed tools necessary to complete their task. Some started to scan through the booklet while others waited patently for the next instructions.

As soon as Iruka finished passing out the booklets he went up to the front. "As you all have guessed, today we will be coloring in these coloring books as we eat our afternoon snacks." he calmly said as he motioned towards one of the baskets at the center of each table.

Each basket had 3 chewy fruit gummies, 12 chocolate cookies, and 3 apple juice boxes

"As usual, each table will be assigned a cleaning job afterwards. Table 1 will be in charge of throwing away the garbage. Table 2 will put away any unused food that was left over. Table 3 wipes off all of the tables. And table 4 will be drying off the tables. Now do we understand the tasks?" Ikura asked; he received nods from the students. "Alright then." he picked another piece of paper before continuing. "I need to give this to Anko-sensei next door. If anyone needs me, I will be over there. Have fun coloring the booklets and eat your snacks. I'll be back soon." and with that he left the room.

The young students quickly divided the snacks between their tablemates evenly and started to doodle in the booklets.

"Ha! I'm going to color the best picture in the class! Beat that Teme!!" yelled a hyperactive blond-haired kid.

"Whatever loser. You can't even color in between the lines. How do you expect to color better then the rest of us?" replied the young raven haired boy.

"Yeah! Sasuke-kun is right! You can't beat the rest of us!" yelled the other blond haired kid.

The young blond haired boy that was dubbed as "loser" flushed a deep shade of pink before snapping back at the blond haired girl.

"Grr… whatever Miss Oinker! At least I can tell my colors apart!"

The blond haired girl staggered before a vain popped out and she yelled angrily back, "Oh yeah! So what? Orange and yellow look alike! It's and easy mistake to make! Mr. I-can't-count-to-ten!"

The blond haired boy scoffed, "No it's not!"

Everyone else in the classroom listened to the blonds constant chatter a bit longer before quickly finding the whole argument as boring.

Neji sat their in quietly doodling in his drawing as he took a sip from his apple juice. Then he felt someone gently poking his shoulder. He looked behind him only to stare at a small pink haired green-eyed girl leaning over the back top of her chair.

"Nee, Neji-kun," she started, "What's a Teme?"

Neji blinked--this question caught him off guard--he didn't know how to even answer this. "Hm… I'm not sure, Sakura, maybe it's one of those things that Sasori-nii call an insult."

Sakura tilted her head to the side, confusion still written all over her face. "I thought that insult was a candy," she said aloud as Neji shrugged.

"My beautiful blossom! I shall find out what the meaning is!" cried out the mini-green beast of Konoha. This comment earned him two angry glares and a few sympathetic glances his way.

"Oh… okay Lee-san. Thank you!" said the pink-haired girl happily completely oblivious at the stares towards the boy.

"What do you mean yours?" asked Neji threateningly eyeing the mini green clothed boy. His best friend/neighbor/classmate did not belong to anyone_-_yet, at least not until he decides who she would be better off with and he had a good idea who that someone was. The other glaring individual was thinking along the same lines.

The said boy froze as he finally looked over at the one that was peering down at him. Neji's pearl eyes stared the boy down when he was smacked by his other fellow seatmate Tenten.

"Lee you psycho! You broke my precious cookie! Give me another one, NOW!!" the twin bun haired girl yelled as she shook the boy hard. Neji sighed and gave her his other cookie to calm her down as he saw the other boy turning a different shade of color.

The brown haired girl's honey brown eyes glittered in total happiness. "Thank you Neji-kun!!" sparkling glitters surrounded her as she reached and grabbed the round cookie.

Sakura sat back properly in her seat when she heard Shikamaru Nara sigh rather loudly.

"Ino, Uzumaki. Could you two cut it out already?" said the lazy boy.

Both blonds whipped their head at to glare at Shikamaru before saying, "What? She/He started it!" at the same time.

Shikamaru slapped his face in frustration.

"Oh boy…" he heard his best friend Choji say gleefully knowing that a new wave of loud bickering would quickly follow.

"Stop that!"

The watched the two blonds yell the same thing at each other.

"Quit copying me!"

Shikamaru rolled his eyes.

"I'm not copying you! You're copying me!"

He sighed again.

"Ano, are those two twins?" Asked the shyest girl in class.

"Who knows they're both blonds, loud and act alike." replied the dog-loving boy as he fed his favorite plushy he named Akamaru.

"We are not!" yelled the two said blonds. They looked at each other again. "Ugh! Not again!" They shouted in unison.

"See? They even mimic each other." Kiba said happily finding yet another thing to support his reasoning.

"I don't think so," said Shino the ever-loving bug boy. At this, both blonds looked at Shino with equal happiness and a newfound respect. However, the bug boy ignored the looks and continued his train of thought. "Acting like idiots does not make you related."

That comment alone made the pair glare daggers at the bug boy and random giggles from everyone else.

Sasuke rolled his eyes. Of course, the Dobe would find something to make everyone else in the classroom laugh. The baka. Soon after everyone in the room got back to the task at hand--eating and coloring those pesky pictures.

Sasuke--the ever top student in his class--colored his pictures with care making sure to not go outside the lines or making a mistake in labeling because that would be so wrong and Uchiha's don't make mistakes. He soon heard a rustling from his female tablemate. He brushed her off thinking that she would soon find what she was looking for. But, after two minutes of looking, she still continued to make noises. He looked up.

"Nee Sakura-chan… whatcha' looking for?" asked the class clown.

"Eh?" Sakura looked up from her searching. "Oh, I'm looking for my other color pencils… they're not here." she pointed at her now empty book bag. "See? All I found were my markers," she said with a small pout.

"Eh? But couldn't you color with markers?"

"But markers are messy and they smear!" she said looking at the blonds' own coloring creation. This was messy and blotchy.

Sasuke also saw the picture and scoffed at the drawing. The picture was supposed to be a fox but for some odd reason it had all a blue colored lion's mane on it, glaring violate eyes, and red colored fangs. All of which were done in bold marker streaks.

"But mine looks fine." Naruto said looking over his masterpiece.

"But--" Sakura started.

"Dope that doesn't even look like a fox anymore. What is it suppose to be?"

"Duh. it's the fox king. I thought he looked a bit plain so I added the mane like a lion and fangs to make him look tough."

"It doesn't even look like fox," Sasuke said rolling his eyes.

"Eh I think that the pictures were supposed to look like real animals in the wild."

Naruto blinked then his face portrayed 'the scream'(1) face. "What do I do?"

"Dobe. There are extra booklets on Iruka-sensei's desk go get another one."

"Good idea Teme." and Naruto got up and ran to get another booklet.

Sakura continued to look around to see if she missed any place while Sasuke watched her.

'_**Help her.' **_his inner self urged on

'_No.'_

'_**She'll be thankful.'**_

'_No she won't.'_

'_**Just ask her.'**_

'_She'll say no.'_

'_**It doesn't hurt to ask.'**_

'_But…'_

'_**Ask her before someone else offers.'**_

"Nee Sakura-chan are you still looking for your color pencils?" asked Naruto sitting back down on his seat.

"Eh? Um yeah. I really want to color using color pencils."

"Hm… well I don't have color pencil, but I do have crayons. Wanna' share that?"

Sasuke stopped his coloring and looked up.

"Oh, okay… since they are better than markers," replied the pinkett giving up on her search for her missing pencils.

"Here Sakura-chan." Naruto scooted over to make more room for her. She didn't complain as she moved closer to the blond and further away from Sasuke.

'_**See? Now she is twice as far from you and hanging around dead last. Happy now?'**_

Sasuke glared at the blond as he watched him take his crayons out and set the items between the two for easy usage.

Once satisfied Naruto took an orange crayon and began coloring. Sakura reluctantly picked up a baby blue crayon and got ready to color.

"Ah… hey Sakura." started Sasuke the said girl looked up from her paper.

"Uh… I have some color pencils you could use." he started he didn't really know what to say since he never really shared his coloring utensils with anyone before.

"Really?" the pinkett's eyes shimmered in realization that she could color her picture with pencils.

"Ah…uh…er we could share if you want."

The whole room quieted down and looked at the raven-haired boy with one thought coming into mind.

"Did he really ask if she wanted to share his color pencils with him?"

Getting over the state of shock quickly she asked if it was really all right.

'_I did offer didn't I.' _he thought but was too embarrassed to say anything so he just nodded.

"Then sure!!"

"Eh? But I thought you were sharing with me…" said Naruto in a light sad voice.

"Oh…a…er, thank you for your offer Naruto-kun, it's just…"

"Yeah yeah I get it…"

"Erm… gomen."

"Nee don't worry about it. But since Teme decided to take let you share with him it's only fair that he lets me use his crayons!" Naruto said with a wild smile.

"Hey! Naruto, Sasuke was being nice letting me share with him you don't have to black mail him into sh--"

"Here." Sasuke through a 24 set crayons at the boy. Naruto caught the whole box and grind wildly before getting back on his drawing.

"E-eh? W-wh-"

"You said you wanted to color with these, right?" Sasuke said holding up a 100 set of color pencil box.

"H-hai…" and she scooted over to the raven-haired boy and began coloring her picture too.

-

About five minutes later Iruka came back to a nice controlled room. He looked around to see that everyone was enjoying their snacks (if they had any left over still) and drinks as the colored in their books. He smiled and just went back to his desk to sit down since no one was in need of any help.

-

Later on, that day school soon came to an end and the students were all slowly getting picked up by their parents or older siblings.

"Oi, Neji!" yelled Naruto from a few feet behind.

Neji looked over to the blond running in his direction. Tenten looked over at the boy too.

"Hey Naruto! What's up?"

"Hi Tenten. Um well…"

"It's alright, you can let her in."

"Oh, cool. Well, here are Sakura-chan's pencils."

Tenten's eyes widened, "Y-you had them!" she stared at the boy with accusing eyes. "That's not cool Naruto, Sakura-chan was looking really had for them."

"Hey hey don't look at me!" Naruto said getting defensive. "It was all Neji's idea!" he said pointing the blame on the Hyuga.

Neji rolled his eyes. Before grabbing the box out of Naruto's hand. "Whatever. You owe me a new soccer ball." he stuffed Sakura's prized color pencils in his bag before he started waking away with Tenten following him.

"Oh, and one more thing." Neji said stopping in midst ride. He looked back at Naruto. "This never happened."

Naruto grinned, "Riiight. Well, I'll see you guys soon on Monday!" and he dashed away.

"Nee, Neji-kun, why did you tell Naruto to take Sakura-chan's pencils?" asked tenten staring at the boy with curiosity.

"Because of that." he answered pointing at three figures ahead of them.

Tenten followed where he was indicating and saw Sasuke holding Sakura's hand while yelling at another boy that was older but looked like Sasuke. The older boy looked like he was having fun teasing the flustered Sasuke. Then Sasuke gave the older boy a glare and pulled Sakura towards him while he lead her away from the boy.

"Eh?"

"We wanted to see what Sasuke was willing to share."

"Share? Oh, you mean his crayons?"

"No."

"Then what?" she asked pulling on sleeve.

Neji smirked before replying. "Sakura."

"Sakura-chan?" tenten repeated.

"Ah." After all if he could trust anyone with Sakura, it would be Sasuke.

With that the two walked together to meet up with Tenten's mother.

-

Later on, that night Sasuke mother asked him if he learned anything new today.

Sasuke smiled lightly and replied. "Hai. Okasan, is there another word for trade?"

"Hm?" his mother looked thoughtful for a second before saying, "exchange."

"Exchange?"

"Yup in means to give something and receive another of the same or something grater in value in return."

"Then that's what I learned."

"Oh?"

"But Okasan…" Sasuke continued, "I didn't exchange something for the same thing, I got something better."

His mother looked at him with a smile. "Well then what did you get?"

Sasuke smiled ominously at her. "Oh you'll find out. But for now she's a secret." and then he got up from his seat and walked away, probably to go bother his older brother.

A minute passed by before she paused washing the dishes. "Eh? Did he just say 'She'?"

* * *

YoungLove: Ta-da! All done!! XD This was fun to write about. The thought just came to my head one day in the middle of my art class. Although at the time, I had so many things I wanted to say; so it took a while to get my thought organized. But hey! I think the result turned really great!!

(1) the scream: a famous painting made by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch--Wikipedia

YoungLove: I hope you enjoyed this one-shot! Please take a small amount of time to tell me what you thought of the story!! So please review! Please and Thank You!

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